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As we review the achievements of this session of the 73rd Congress, it is made increasingly

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clear that its task was essentially that of completing and fortifying the work which it

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had begun in March 1933.

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That was no easy task, but the Congress was equal to it.

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It has been well said that while there were a few exceptions, this Congress displayed

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a greater freedom from mere partisanship than any other peacetime Congress in our history

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since the administration of President Washington.

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Substantial gains well known to all of you have justified our cause.

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I could cite statistics to show you as unanswerable measures of our national progress, figures

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to show the gain in the average weekly pay envelope of workers in the great majority

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of our industry, figures to show hundreds of thousands of people re-employed in private

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industries and other hundreds of thousands given new employment through the expansion

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of direct and indirect government assistance of various kinds.

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In the working out of a great national program that seeks the primary good of the greater

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number, it is true that the toes of some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped

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on, but these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain position

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or riches or both by some shortcut that is harmful to the greater good.

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The program of the past year is definitely in operation, and that operation month by

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month is being made to fit into the web of old and new conditions.

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A few timid people who fear progress will try to give you new and strange names for

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what we are doing.

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Sometimes they will call it fascism, and sometimes communism, and sometimes regimentation, and

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sometimes socialism, but in so doing they are trying to make very complex and theoretical

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something that is really very simple and very practical.

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I believe in practical explanations and in practical policy.

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I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans

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have always been doing, a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals.

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While I was in France during the World War, our boys over there used to call the United

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States God's country.

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Let us make it and keep it God's country.